


Non-Disclosure Agreement

by her_majesty_wears_jeans



Series: Outside the (Ask) Box [9]
Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: Angst, CIA era, Challenge Response, Could Be Canon, F/M, Female Friendship, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pre-Canon, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-11-24 10:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20906219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/her_majesty_wears_jeans/pseuds/her_majesty_wears_jeans
Summary: Elizabeth has just begun working for the CIA and she has trouble with not being able to tell Henry.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> For a writer's challenge by 2queens1prince on Tumblr. 
> 
> The prompt: "Always so fucking tight for me." Rules: no smut, drabblish length.

“So, since we hadn’t gotten anywhere with the guy himself, I went over his wives to see if one of them had any connections to the area where our mark went missing from, and it turns out wife number four’s brother worked at a bank two blocks from there a few years ago."

“I… don’t know”, Elizabeth says, “Seems a bit farfetched.”

“My middle name”, Isabelle quips with a bright smile, turning around. Taking in the line of her friend’s sight that is nowhere near the whiteboard, she frowns, capping the marker she was playing with. “And ‘distracted’ seems to be yours right now.”

“Huh?”

Isabelle raises an eyebrow at Elizabeth, who gives a sheepish chuckle Isabelle joins in on as she walks over to the desk and hops on it. “What’s wrong, Bess?”

Elizabeth exhales, running a hand through her hair that keeps falling on her face. “I was just thinking back to my conversation with Henry last night.”

“What about it?”

“That’s just it. I don’t recall half of it”, Elizabeth exclaims, “It was the first time I heard from him in a week and I can’t even remember what we talked about.”

Isabelle purses her lips, but only nods for her to go on, letting her vent.

“I just wish-”, Elizabeth stops to sigh and starts again, “He’s not here to share my everyday life like he should be, so at least I’d like to be able to tell him about what I’ve been doing.”

Isabelle tilts her head as she considers the woman she’s grown close with in record time. She’s not used to warming up to people quickly, but since Elizabeth was the first person whose idealism Isabelle surprisingly didn’t find draining, who responded to her cynicism and dry humor with endearingly bad jokes of her own, she let herself embrace the budding friendship.

“I get it. It sucks”, she says empathetically. Isabelle has yet to meet Henry, but she’s pretty sure that assuming she stays friends with Elizabeth, it’s inevitable. From what she’s observed, Henry and Elizabeth are in it for the long haul. She can’t really relate to Elizabeth’s situation, but she can understand how keeping things from Henry would be bothering her. “But hey, at least you don’t need to lie to his face if he’s overseas now.”

Elizabeth groans, letting her head hit the table. That wasn’t exactly the bright side she was hoping to hear. “Are the regulations always so fucking tight or is it just me?”

Isabelle shrugs. “Honestly, I don’t think they’re that tight.”

“Really?” Elizabeth whines, “They seem that way to me.”

“You’re just not thinking creatively enough”, Isabelle says, uncrossing and crossing her legs again, “For example, when I told my girlfriend I was suddenly moving to DC for an unforeseen amount of time for reasons I wasn’t at liberty to share at the moment, she basically accused me of catfishing and broke it off. Problem solved.”

Elizabeth cringes. “I’m sorry, Isabelle.”

“It’s okay. You know lawyers, paranoid by nature”, Isabelle smirks. “Though, I suppose she had a reason in my case. I _am_ suspicious.”

That gets a laugh out of Elizabeth. “I don’t know what Henry thinks I’m doing”, she says, shaking her head. “I’m pretty sure he would’ve confronted me about it if he thought something fishy was going on, but…”

“He can’t tell you everything about where he is or what he’s doing, either, though, right?”

“Well, right.”

“There’s your solution then”, Isabelle announces, smiling as she pats Elizabeth’s shoulder, “You’re both in pretty weird situations now, but they won’t last forever. Once you get your career going, you’ll learn how to talk to him more freely without giving away anything you’re not supposed to. In the meanwhile, just think of it as practicing small talk.”

Elizabeth smiles despite herself. She knows Isabelle is being uncharacteristically optimistic for her, but the sentiment does make her feel better. As Isabelle walks back to the whiteboard, however, she calls after her. “Hey, I don’t need to work on my small talk.”

“Bess, the first thing you said to me was that I had picked the wrong type of pastry in the cafeteria.”

Isabelle doesn’t have time to get out of the way as Elizabeth picks up the marker she left on the desk and throws it at her.


	2. Part 2

Later that night, Elizabeth crawls into bed wearing one of Henry’s t-shirts and stares at the ceiling.

It took her a day to realize why she hates the silence between her and Henry so much. It’s because she feels guilty. She promised not to push him away when things get tough. They aren’t tough now, not by a long shot, even when she only has his fading scent on the clothes she strategically stole before he left and his voice from the other end of the telephone and she misses him more every day.

Rationally, she knows she’s not pushing him away. And she knows he wouldn’t leave even if she did. But some part of her, the one that’s still getting used to the idea of having more family than Will again, fears that he will. She’ll need to silence that part.

Because the truth is, he doesn’t need to know. Not when they’re oceans apart. She’ll tell him eventually, of course she will. He’ll come home, and she’ll tell him everything she can. But for now-

With a smile, she hurries out of bed and calls Henry to tell him about the cinnamon-flavored popcorn she bought on her way home.

Next week, she complains about the weather and how someone stole her umbrella. The call after that, she gushes about a novel she finally got around to reading.

Henry always seems delighted to hear from her, no matter how frivolous the things she talks about are, which makes her feel a little better. And then he comes home, and she comes clean about her new job, and he only seems excited for her, which makes her feel a lot better.

Isabelle, even in her most over-simplified moment of positivity, was right – not too rare an occurrence, Elizabeth notices over the years, though it continues to surprise her. Dalton was right, too, when he said Elizabeth would be suited for the company. Slowly, she grows more comfortable with her work, begins to recognize the qualities that make her good at it, learns to embrace all aspects of it.

Except for the need-to-know policy.

Henry knows her better than anyone else. She needs that, needs him to know everything about her. And she hates it that she can’t tell him about her days. She does get good at almost-telling him – Henry is not stupid either, so with a little practice, they can have conversations where they talk about things neither of them mentions. It becomes common practice for much more meaningless topics once Stevie grows old enough, though it still doesn’t feel completely right to Elizabeth. Her husband is supposed to be the one she can talk about things she can’t talk about with anyone else; things she has never shared with anyone, things she can only whisper in the middle of the night when his arms are between her and the darkness.

She is okay with lying to the kids, but she hates having to use even half-truths with Henry. It’s the only thing that doesn’t get easier with time, the only thing that has her morally flinching every time she does it.

Until she goes to Iraq.

She does what she must and comes home angry, disappointed, sad, and relieved all at the same time. She opens the familiar front door and she’s never felt more lost. She doesn’t know what to tell them. Even if she could tell her family she wasn’t in Jordan, she has no idea how. She’s not sure she understands the situation herself; it would be impossible to explain it to someone who wasn’t there.

Somehow, though, Henry already _knows_; he barely takes one look at her before he opens his arms, and she flies into his embrace, buries her face in the crook of his neck, and for the first time, is really, really glad she can’t talk about it.


End file.
